But to some Apple fans from around the world, he’s now something of a cult hero.

That’s because Kamath unwittingly exposed a major security vulnerability that affected all Mac owners using the latest High Sierra operating system. And he did it right under Apple’s nose, on its developers forum website — more than two weeks before Apple issued a software update to patch the security bug.

Kamath, in a Skype interview from Bangalore, told this news organization that he initially thought he was offering a helpful tip on the Apple forum. In his Nov. 13 post, he provided a simple method people could use to restore administrative access to a Macbook — without needing a password.

Kamath found the solution — he said he read it on a forum he can’t remember — of typing “root” in the “Users & Groups” preferences login page with no password to acquire near-instant admin access, after losing his admin access to his own Macbook when he changed his Apple ID.

“It was late in the night, it was pure frustration, and I tried it out and bam, it worked,” said Kamath, who in Apple forums goes by his username chethan177.

He said he sincerely thought the “root” access he’d found was a High Sierra feature. (The original forum thread now appears to be locked, and can only be accessed with an Apple ID and password.)

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About two weeks after Kamath’s post, Turkish developer Lemi Orhan Ergin raised the issue on Twitter — five days after his staff had privately alerted Apple to the security flaw, according to his blog post. The issue blew up in hours, and Apple scrambled to release a security fix within 24 hours, along with a rare apology.

“Security is a top priority for every Apple product, and regrettably we stumbled with this release of macOS,” said an Apple spokesperson in a statement last week. “We greatly regret this error and we apologize to all Mac users, both for releasing with this vulnerability and for the concern it has caused. Our customers deserve better.”

Apple fans began talking about who this chethan177 was and how on Earth he discovered the bug two weeks before anyone else.

“I like to imagine that this guy is the most brilliant hacker of all time, capable of manipulating any computer in the world, and just forgot that breaking into a computer without a password isn’t something you’re normally supposed to be able to do,” wrote another.

For the record, Kamath said no, he is not some elite hacker. He has just picked up coding and Swift, Apple’s in-house coding language, because he wanted to figure out something else he could do for his future career after taking a sabbatical, following years as a patent attorney.

“It didn’t occur to me someone can get into my laptop using the bug,” said Kamath. “I saw the news travel really fast. I thought I did something damaging, but then it hit me how serious this was.”

Kamath said Apple never contacted him and that he received no bug bounty reward for discovering the problem. However, he was pleased about how quickly Apple responded with a fix.

He said he’s just happy he has been able to receive credit for finding the bug, without the scrutiny other cybersecurity experts such as Ergin faced after they made the bug public.

“I think I’m glad in a way I was ignorant about the issue,” said Kamath. “It feels good to sit in the back and see what’s happening.”

Seung covers Apple and personal technology for the Bay Area News Group. He was previously a technology reporter for Newsweek and a weekly columnist for the San Francisco Examiner. Seung grew up in Los Angeles and graduated from UC Berkeley.